The House just passed a preposterous bill designed to attack NPR and dismantle America’s public media system piece by piece. The bill, H.R. 1076, cuts NPR off from all federal funding and prohibits local public radio stations from using federal funds to buy radio programming, or pay dues to NPR.

As the debate over this bill stretched on throughout almost the entire day, proponents of the bill repeated two talking points over and over again. Let’s fact check those claims.

Fiction: Cutting NPR funding is what the American taxpayers want.

Fact: There is overwhelming bi-partisan support from around the country for public broadcasting. Earlier this week, the Free Press Action Fund joined with our allies at MoveOn.org and CREDO Action to hand-deliver to Capitol Hill more than one million letters in support of restored funding. That’s not all; an independent public opinion poll from earlier this month found that 69% of the public, including more than half the Republican faithful, oppose attempts to gut federal funding for public media. Today, seven Republicans broke rank with their party and voted to stop the cuts.

Fiction: Cutting NPR funding is a necessary first step in solving America’s budget crisis.

Fact: The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reviewed the bill and ruled that it would not save one penny. On average, taxpayers spend less than $1.50 per person, per year to support public broadcasting across the country.

But the facts don’t seem to matter to political ideologues in Congress.

“This vote shows that the People’s House has stopped listening to the people,” said Craig Aaron, managing director of Free Press. “It is shameful that so many members voted to deny their own communities a vital, local source of news, information and entertainment. Congress should be spending its time creating jobs and putting Americans back to work, not grandstanding to punish an organization relied on every day by the people who put them in office.”

It’s time we put a stop to scapegoating one of our nation’s most trusted sources of news and information.

The bill now moves to the Senate, and we’ll be there, ready for a fight.

Correction: Removed the line "The bill tweaks how money is spent, not how much money is spent."